Where does public relations and marketing intersect with advertising now more than ever? Social media.
During a client call last week, we discussed the plans for online marketing and advertising buys for the next six months, which include online ad banners running to select online lifestyle publications via an ad network. As we help to strategize and implement many social media tactics for this brand, the next question that arose was, is any of this online advertising push going to be targeted at social networks and more specifically via Facebook?
As a public relations firm with deep digital media roots, we work hand in hand with big and small, publicly traded and non-profits to implement digital media strategies. We truly believe (and practice) that the strategies not only include the creative promotion ideas and tactics to increase daily engagement with fans but also advertising on these social networks to help elevate a brands’ presence.
What does this mean for any brand/company big or small that has a social media presence or wants to have one? As Edward Boches hits on in a post regarding the intersection of advertising and social media, gone are the days such that advertising, marketing and communications/PR departments work in silos. Directors of CRM need to work in tandem with the online advertising team, while the marketing group and communications/PR agency are looped in and helping to strategize messages and timing – all to achieve the larger goal = quality engagement with more consumers.
At the end of the conversation the client informed us that yes there would be advertising buys for Facebook (and additional social networks) to come in the next several months and we would be part of the conversation to refine messages, timing and strategies. With over 350 million users around the world and 50 percent of them logging in on any given day, Facebook provides an enormous amount of reach and interaction capabilities for brands today. One year ago, we couldn’t say that and one year from now Twitter may be the go to social media platform to advertise on. In the end, it’s important to recognize that just as social media should not be a separate silo from public relations, online advertising and social media need to be working together in tandem. Regardless of title and role, we’re all working towards achieving greater engagement.
~ Marielle Covington
RCI's resort in Labadee, Haiti. Photo courtesy of Tiffany L Bruce, via CNN.com
It’s the classic PR snafu. Some tragedy happens and a hapless flack gets a public thrashing from a journalist for pitching them about how their company could have helped.
But, what can companies do when their everyday operations lead them to be embroiled in a major humanitarian disaster? This is exactly what’s happened with Royal Caribbean International, (RCI) whose cruises include a stop in Haiti, as outlined by this CNN article.
The gist of it all is, is it ethical for RCI to continue going to Haiti (albeit to its developed, guarded compound many miles from the affected region), or to pull out as a sign of respect? Frankly, it’s a tough choice. For the cruisers, the thought of being so close to so much suffering and being cocooned away from it all could be quite distasteful. On the other hand, if RCI pulls out, that will take away a much needed source of jobs and revenue for the island, and we all know that they need all the help they can get right now.
I actually think that although the knee-jerk reaction would be to pull out (and there is certainly lots of talk about this subject), and on the surface of it, that’s the “nicest” response, RCI made a sound decision in staying.
It also handled the PR well, by announcing it would donate at least $1 million in humanitarian aid to Haiti and contribute all of the its net revenue from Labadee (RCI’s resort in Haiti) to the relief effort. RCI is also helping with the humanitarian aid – its ships are also delivering supplies – including rice, dried beans, powdered milk, water and canned goods – to the region. What’s best is that all of this was accomplished without the all-too-easy-to-do PR hand-wringing,
Although obviously RCI’s motives will always be questioned as to how much of it is altruistic and how much is simply brand halo-polishing, RCI is helping Haiti both short and long-term with its efforts, and this should be applauded.
Quick Disclaimer: My client, Johnny Rockets, has a relationship with RCI, with locations on a number of its vessels. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this post. I still think RCI is doing the right thing.
Tim Wheatcroft
I always wonder why PR people still allow their clients to promote anything as “un-[XXX]-able.” It almost never goes well. In my past I’ve had clients talk about their firewalls as being unhackable, and here’s yet another example. You have to admire that the CEO of Sonim didn’t turn ashen when the BBC reporter managed to break his phone within about three seconds, but even behind his smile, he must have been thinking “why did I set myself up for this?”
It would have been so much for him just to say that it was toughened and could stand up to most knocks. That would have been a much easier (if slightly less sexy) pitch than calling it unbreakable. But oh no, bravado and / or too much faith in your products took over. And it wasn’t pretty.
Tip for marketers everywhere. If you issue a challenge, someone, somewhere, will take you up on it. And if they succeed, you’ll know about it – especially if it’s a tech reporter doing it on camera at the world’s largest consumer electronics show.
~ Tim Wheatcroft
2009 was a time of economic uncertainty and downward pressure on public relations budgets. Given the realities of the challenging environment – one in which ‘flat’ became the new ‘up’ – where many PR professionals found themselves under-employed (or even unemployed), you might think the last thing on an agency executive’s mind is “talent shortage”. Think again.
The PR industry faces a looming talent shortage. While the good news is the PR industry is forecast to grow rapidly over the coming years, the bad news is that future demand for PR services may exceed the ability of the industry to meet it. During the downturn of 2008–2009, PR firms of all sizes refrained from hiring emerging talent they will require to meet their future needs as economic conditions improve. What this inevitably means is a deficit of experienced mid-level professional staff – ranging from SAEs to AMs – starting in 2012 and going into 2013.
There’s nothing particularly unique about this: the same happened following previous recessions. Following the 1991 recession, senior managers at the time remember well the talent shortages seen in 1994 and 1995. The PR industry forever lost a generation of rising stars not hired by firms in 1991 and 1992 – and the cycle repeated itself after the 2001-2002 downturn.
The point here is that the PR industry has to learn a painful lesson from the past: that it must think ahead and hire entry level talent during 2010 and 2011. There’s an abundance of ultra-bright, ambitious, unemployed college graduates out there. Choose the best ones, put them through rigorous professional development programs, provide them with ongoing training and mentoring, and fast track those demonstrating superior ability. The long-term benefits will be substantial. With the lion’s share of social networking projects now being won by PR firms, higher margin revenue opportunities will provide a solid return on the investment in talent. The years 2010 – 2020 will turn out to be the golden years for the PR industry. It’s time to staff up.
~ Andy Hardie Brown
Google finally announced the details on its new phone, the cryptically-titled Nexus One. To say that this could shake up the mobile phone market is like saying that the introduction of the internal combustion engine may have had an impact on the auto industry.
So what’s so good about it (or bad, depending on whether you’re a carrier)? Well, the big thing is that it’s going to be sold unlocked, meaning you can run it on any network you want, whereas the iPhone, for example, has typically been tied to AT&T. Also, Google will be pushing full VoIP to the phone. That means that you won’t get charged for minutes from your carrier, regardless of where you dial to. In short, we may finally start to see traditional mobile telcos simply become a dumb pipe – like your Internet connection at home, with will act simply as a data conduit, regardless of what information is sent down it. Even in today’s era of $50 all-you-can-eat packages, it could still have a huge impact on the market, particularly for high-margin business users.
Being someone who travels abroad quite a bit though, the big turn on for me is that they will allow users who travel to Europe to connect to HSDPA (that’s tech speak for “faster than the wireless data access you get in the U.S.”) networks for just €20 per month. No more horror stories of thousand dollar data bills. Exciting times, indeed.
- Tim Wheatcroft
Client-Agency Relationship is a Two-Way Street (but clients always have right-of-way)
“When people tell me their client ‘needs’ to understand or ‘needs’ to do something, you know what I tell them? That the only thing any client ‘needs’ to do is pay their bills.”
A wise mentor of mine shared that motto with me early in my days transitioning from journalism to agency life, and the pragmatic wisdom behind it stuck. He’s right, of course. We on the agency side often grumble behind our smiles about all the ways we wish our clients could understand better how we work or what we really need to help them achieve PR success, when it really is part of our job to figure out how to work with what they give us. It’s also part of our job to help educate clients – from the very start of our engagement with them – understand how we can better work together to achieve mutual success, and to not sugar-coat the time and effort on their parts it might take to get there. The bottom line is that most successful PR campaigns involve a client whose senior leadership is fully engaged in the PR process and are willing to invest his or her time in the agency relationship and media relations.
Several of our current consumer clients illustrate the two-way street principle in action. With national real estate brokerage ZipRealty, for example, CEO Pat Lashinsky will hop on a plane or take a phone interview on a few moments’ notice for a national, top-tier opportunity. Demonstrating flexibility, client Jingle Networks recently took the agency’s suggestions on product enhancements and new features to “create news” that have helped increase our success rate at securing coverage. They have also trusted in us to shift a portion of their monthly retainer into social media activities to boost WOM marketing to drive call volume. And then sometimes it’s just the little things that matter. Kimpton CEO Mike Depatie, a busy guy by all accounts, not only personally downloads our team every year with the commercial real estate lay of the land to inform our pitches and squeezes in every business media request we throw his way during a two-day conference, he also remembers to send a warm thank you note along to the team for successes achieved along the way. Did I mention how much we love working with Kimpton?
Want to become a similarly beloved client to your agency – and more importantly, achieve stellar results for your PR program? Here are a few suggestions:
- Realize PR takes work and time, and commit to it (i.e., don’t back off when it seems like a bit of a pain).
- Trust your firm’s recommendations and judgment, particularly with media relations, where we live and breathe.
- Stay flexible. Not every press release or pitch works, and sometimes you need to switch gears, particularly when a breaking news story provides an unforeseen opportunity or competitive activity necessitates a change in direction.
- Realize and respect journalist deadlines. For agencies, relationships are our bread and butter, and burning bridges by turning down interviews that are inconveniently timed or not getting information to a reporter in time hurts us as well as your future odds at coverage.
– Aimee Grove
The “Like it or not, if you’re a brand, you’re a publisher” edition
The Guardian UK: Media140: How Twitter has affected brands
Some excellent thoughts on how brands have reacted to the challenge of our “publishing society”
Copyblogger – 7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School
“New” media requires a new style of writing
Mashable: 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips
a.k.a. you’ve got to have something to say now that there are plenty of places to say it.
Destination CRM: Finding the Value of Findability
Why produce content if no one can find it?
- Allison & Partners
With six years’ experience encouraging San Francisco Bay Area residents to reduce driving for the “Spare the Air” campaign, Allison & Partner’s Social Impact team decided it was time flex its social marketing muscle for an internal initiative: composting. As part of our green business certification, we installed a compost bin and wanted to be sure it was well-utilized by the staff. Composting is an important sustainable behavior because our cities’ landfills are bursting at the seams, and food scraps and lawn clippings left to decompose in trash heaps produce methane, a greenhouse gas, and therefore contribute to global warming.
We kicked off our campaign with a contest in which staffers were pitted against each other to sort a pile of garbage into three categories: trash, recycle and compost. With “Jeopardy” theme music in the background and buzzers to signify right or wrong choices, the race was a fun, not preachy, way to introduce the concept. Next, we used the sorted materials to create three-dimensional posters that hang above our trash, recycling and composting bins to prompt staffers to sort their garbage and do so correctly. To keep people accountable for composting behavior, we created a Pepe Le Pew ‘award’ that is placed on the desk of anyone who fails to take the compost to an outdoor drop bin on his/her assigned day.
Besides its environmental benefits, the campaign has helped boost employee morale and even inspired a few staffers to institute the practice at home, giving them a head start in complying with San Francisco’s new mandatory composting law that took effect yesterday, October 21. To keep the momentum going in the office, we’re unveiling new elements like composting bins in the bathroom for paper towels, and a weekly compost pop quiz in our morning meeting where anyone – including CEO Scott Allison – is fair game.
- Courtney Newman
allisonandpartners